The Second Amendment: the Political is Personal

The 1960s saw the battle cry The Personal is Political, as a rallying cry for social agitation.  Personal preference gave rise to political movements, some for the better and some for the worse.  Well, that street runs both ways - political actions can - and should - lead to personal acts in response.

A year ago today, I began a post describing the political actions of the Town of Arlington, MA:

I've linked several times to posts over at the blog Dispatches from TJICistan.  TJIC is an outspoken (some might say extremely so) advocate of smaller government.  He's also a firearms owner in the People's Republic of Massachusetts.  While he owns guns, it appears that he's no longer allowed to possess any

Massachusetts' gun control laws are in my opinion unconstitutional, since they give each town's Police Chief complete discretion to decide who can possess firearms, who can't, and why not.  Arlington revoked TJIC's enumerated right to keep arms, without so much as charging him with any crime.  Indeed, they could not, because the words that they objected to are clearly constitutionally protected.

It was a political act, intended to make an example of him.  Well, the Political is Personal:

Brad_In_MA emails to point out that Thursday is the anniversary of the epic screwing of TJIC by the People's Soviet of Massachusetts*.  He has a call to action that is filled with win:

I propose a Jan 19 BUYcott of anything 2a related, in support of JTIC.  Mind putting up such a post?  I plan on getting a few targets and a brick of some .22lr range ammo for my ruger 22/45, aka Miss Cherry.  The idea is to BUY something.  Anything.  Price does not matter.  Quantity does not matter.  In short, a simple request for a simple action to support a Brother in Need.

I would go one step further, and suggest a buycott (the opposite of a boycott, 'natch, where you purposely buy from someone as opposed to refusing to buy from them).  As it turns out, TJIC is an entrepreneur, and has a company that makes this easy for everyone:  Smartflix.

Think Netflix, only for learning DVDs.  Want to learn CNC milling?  Introduction to gunsmithing?  Combat Pistol University?  M1 Garand Armorer course?

This is an opportunity for everyone to learn some skills that will likely appall the Usual Suspects™ in Massachusetts while helping to offset TJIC's legal costs (which will also appall the Usual Suspects™ in Massachusetts).

And so the call goes out.  Pass it on.  And look at SmartFlix, and point it out to your friends.  There's good stuff there.  Let's all stress his servers on January 19.

Let's put our own money where it will do some good defend the Second Amendment.  TJIC is fighting our battle.

Make it Personal.

Postscript: reader Stretch emails to tell us that he's taken direct Second Amendment action:

He describes this sweet heater's virtues, which are legion:

Browning Hi-Power/P-35

Belgium made.

A finish unknown to me. Possibly ceramic.

3-dot sights.

13 rounds of 9mm goodness to say "Up yours." to officious ... um ... officials everywhere.

The Arlington Police Department - arming citizens all over the country!

Newt Gingrich, the GOP, and the Battle of World Views

I keep saying that this election is about a conflict of world views.  Obama came into office determined to fundamentally change the country, reshaping it to match a strongly leftist philosophy.  This is why it is such a danger to succumb to the "any Republican" (translation: Mitt Romney) trope that the establishment is trying to hammer down our throat.

Offered as Exhibit A in the case of the Republic vs. Big Government Republicans: George W. Bush.  He ran as a "compassionate conservative", which means "I'll spend your money for you almost as fast as Al Gore would."

What's needed is to crush the leftist ideology.  Not to show merely that it is wrong, but that it is illegitimate.  Ron Paul gets that:

The problem with Paul is not that he's loopy on foreign policy, but that he's too much of the kindly old uncle, rambling his way to something that makes sense instead of hitting you between the eyes.  He's a walking tl;dr, and his delivery is so laid back that half of the electorate will stop listening before he gets to his point.

Newt knows how to bring the ideas, hard, to where they make you stop and think.  Here he shreds Juan Williams.  His answer starts with a simple, blanket denial that he agrees with anything that Williams said.  Then he takes 90 seconds to flay any legitimacy that anyone thought Williams' question might have had from the bone, and then chews the bone to small pieces.  Williams is left utterly defeated, and the crowd is left on its feet in a standing ovation.

I realize that in Politically Correct circles it's not allowed to raise uncomfortable facts.  That's  not Reaganesque, it channels the best of Margaret Thatcher, breaking the British Labour party.



Crush your enemy's ideology.  The crowd booed Williams.  Booed.  And this isn't just a one-off, either:



We actually think that work is good.  But remember, the enemy ideology lives not just in the Democratic Party.  George W. Bush's "Compassionate Conservativism" also falls under is icy glare.



Crush the enemy's ideology.  See it driven from the airwaves.  Listen to the lamentation of his professors.  Newt does it, over and over.

Ron Paul does, too.  But Paul is incoherent on foreign policy.  That might not have made a difference in 2000, but it does in 2012.  Newt brings the ideological hammer down:



Andrew Jackson had a good idea about what to do with America's enemies: kill them.

There are many things that I do not like about Newt, but one advantage that he has over the entire GOP crowd is that he knows how to deflate the Democrat's ideology, to show not that it is mistaken, but that it is immoral.  Four years of that hammer will leave the political discussion in this country profoundly different.  The Republic needs that, and someone who will not flinch from repeatedly telling the opposition that they hate the poor:



It's the same conflict of visions.  Today's UK is profoundly different than it was in 1979, because the Iron Lady refused to back down in the face of a left - unions, the media, the universities - that held her in withering contempt.  By returning that contempt with equal fervor and backing it up with unarguable facts, she wrenched the Realm off of the track to ruin, to the point that "Red" Ken Livingston is a curiosity, and not the head of the Labour Party.

Newt is probably the only one here who can do the same.

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.

- Winston Churchill

UPDATE 19 January 2012 08:52: Thanks to Bob Owens for pointing out it was Juan Williams, not Juan Cole.

And a great darkness descended upon the land

Then Hashem said to Moshe: Hold out your arm towards the sky that there may be darkness upon the land of Egypt, a darkness that can be touched. Moshe held out his arm toward the sky and thick darkness descended upon all the land of Egypt for three days.

- Shemot 10:21-23

Pharaoh (Austin's own [Republican] Congressman Lamar Smith) has hardened his heart, and intends to bind us to the RIAA with the mighty chains of the SOPA and PIPA legislation.  And so a great darkness descends upon the land.

Peter rounds up the SOPA legislation Internet General Strike.  I agree with him - this is important.  The Internet has become mission critical, and has revolutionized politics throughout the world.  Turning the keys of the greatest communications medium ever devised by the mind of man over to Dinosaurs stuck in a dieing business model (that would be both the RIAA and the Dinosaur Political Parties) is madness.

It is, indeed, ceding the Promised Land to Pharaoh.

And so today I join the Internet General Strike.  This is a taste of what the Internet will be, should SOPA and PIPA become law of the land.  The Internet Ice Cream Machine is clenching its fist in Solidarity with Peter, Wikipedia, and all believers in truth and freedom.

I would gently remind my readers, though, that they should gaze upon Rep. Lamar Smith.  See, with eyes of seeing.  The GOP is not your friend.  Yea, they bring down darkness across the land.

I will be back tomorrow, after our Industrial Action.  I urge my fellow bloggers to join me in going dark today.  Join us, and shoulder to shoulder we will face down the Moloch State.  Show Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) that we will not go gently into that good night of central control.  We don't think it is for our good, or society's.

For it will be very difficult to persuade men of sense that he who with dry eyes and satisfaction of mind can deliver his brother to the executioner to be burnt alive, does sincerely and heartily concern himself to save that brother from the flames of hell in the world to come.

- John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration

The Dinosaurs smell a change on the breeze.  They roar their defiance, but we don't care.

UPDATE:  You need to watch this.


PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

There is a form here that you can enter your address and email, and it will email your Senators.  If you do this, you should change the wording in the body.

Robb also has good advice.

Support a four-footed veteran

Adopt a vet:



This program makes me wag my tail:

1/31/2008 - LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, TEXAS -- Most people go to the local pet store or animal shelter to find their new pet dog. But on Jan. 29, John and Jackie Yarborough from Phoenix flew to Lackland to adopt a 3-year-old German shepherd named Jenny. She was up for adoption after failing to meet the requirements necessary to become a military working dog.

...
First Lt. John Farmer, 341st Training Squadron Logistics Flight commander, supplied the Yarboroughs with Jenny's diet plan and proper transportation materials.

"Part of my job is to make sure the dogs that don't work out for our program find a good home," said Lieutenant Farmer. "We rely on people like John and Jackie to give these dogs that home. Just because these dogs don't work out for us, doesn't mean they won't make a great pet for someone else."

Sadly, the dogs become classified as "excess equipment" at the end of their careers.  Well, readers here will know of my love affair with old Mil-Surp.  This just gives it some added depth.

The FAQ for the program is here.

Your daily WTF

That's the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk taking green water over the flight deck.  80,000 tons displacement getting bobbed like a cork.  The flight deck is around 100 feet over the water line.  Hope that the Infirmary is stocked with plenty of Dramamine.

Via Blogbrother PISSED in an email.

The Presidential ticket from hell

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Adversity doesn't build character

It reveals character:

She said: ‘I want everyone to know how badly some people [aboard the sinking cruise liner Costa Concordia] behaved. It was a nightmare. I lost my daughter and my grandchildren in the chaos.

I was standing by the lifeboats and men, big men, were banging into me and knocking the girls. It was awful. There was a total lack of organisation. There was no one telling people where to go.

And when we finally got into a lifeboat, people, grown men, were trying to jump into the boat. I thought, if they land in here we are going to capsize.

Compare and contrast:

Update: Reports now say the number of passengers [on U.S. Air Flight 1549, which ditched in the Hudson River in January 2009] are between 140 and 160. A witness says the plane is floating downstream.

So far, it's believed all occupants are out of the plane. A secondary search is being conducted; fire department rescue teams from NJ and other NY are aiding.

A passenger said 1010WINS that the pilot told passengers should brace themselves—the passenger credited the pilot for steering them into the water and he said that they had children and women leave the plane first. The plane has floated down toward 23rd Street. [emphasis mine - Borepatch]

This is the point where I have to tell every Progressive who ever told us that "we need to be more like Europe" to shut up and sit down in the back of the room.  Grown ups are talking.

And I mean that.  For two generations, Europeans have been coddled by their governments - asked to do ever less (other than support their Ruling Elite) while the Governments do ever more.  We saw the result of that, in the icy waters of the Mediterranean, as society went feral and it was sauve qui peut.

Here on this side of the Pond, we saw the same scenario play out - a disaster threatening sudden, unexpected death in the icy Hudson river.  Here, it was women and children first*.

There cannot be a more basic condemnation of the Progressive State than the pairing of these two incidents.  It is basic that society exists above all to protect women and children - else, what future for society?  The way that the State has expunged this instinct from its society is all you need to know of the utter failure of the Progressive dream.

Too bad it took Europe down with it.  Used to be a nice place.

* Offer void in Massachusetts, where the dumb as a rock Attorney General Martha Coakley does not encourage self help.

Illegal receiver down field

You might recall that I tried to hook up my DVD player to my videoconferencing system so I could watch Netflix.  It worked great playing the DVD on my laptop and piping it to the Video monitor.  Going from the DVD player to the video unit resulted in nothing but a blank screen.  The reason is copy protection.

You see, the DVD player uses an HDMI output, which uses HDCP copy protection.  The video unit uses DVI.  No copy protection.

(Image source)

The DVD player didn't get a copy protection handshake, so the screen was blank.  Dark.  No output.

Copy protection was implemented so that content providers and hardware manufactures could offer me a far better video experience than I could get over analog composite cable.  So far, I'm digging this user experience.

So I guess I'll run over to Good Will, which has a bunch of old tube TVs for $20.

The whole experience, quite frankly, has put me right off all the "content" that I can't see.  Maybe I won't bother replacing the TV.  Screw 'em.

Mitt Romney's most dangerous opponent this year ...

... is Mitt Romney.



You know, I could really get behind one of those guys.  The problem is that the other is a bigger liar than Bill Clinton.  And I hadn't know that was even possible.

You're only allowed a certain number of flips before people doubt your character.

Via #1 Son, who is really paying attention to this election.

Postscript: I'd like to just ask you to pass this message along to a friend.

Anything for you, Mitt.  Whichever of you asked.

Compare and contrast: Mitt Romney and Ron Paul on Medical Marijuana

Both talk to the exact same dieing patient.  The exchanges could not have been more different.



I've said before a number of times that I thought that Mitt was a moral man, even though we disagreed on many things.  I no longer can say that.  To turn back on a sick man because you think that it's in your political interest to do so is grotesque.  It reminds me of Bill Clinton in 1992.  He allowed a mentally ill man to be executed because he thought it would win him votes from the "tough on crime" crowd.  Christopher Hitchens never let that subject drop:

After falling behind in the New Hampshire primary in 1992, and after being caught lying about the affair with Gennifer Flowers to which he later confessed under oath, Clinton left the campaign trail and flew home to Arkansas to give the maximum publicity to his decision to sign a death warrant for Ricky Ray Rector. Rector was a black inmate on death row who had shot himself in the head after committing a double murder and, instead of dying as a result, had achieved the same effect as a lobotomy would have done. He never understood the charge against him or the sentence. After being served his last meal, he left the pecan pie on the side of the tray, as he told the guards who came to take him to the execution chamber, "for later."

This is worse, actually.  The man in this video is no criminal.  He never shot a cop.  He just wants his suffering to be relieved.  He's not even asking the Fed.Gov to pay for that, just to not jail the doctors who would help him assuage his pain.

And Mitt turns his back and walks away.

Mitt Romney is a miserable, politically calculating, lying bastard.  I don't know about you, but for me, I will never vote for that scumbag.

Via #1 Son, who is (surprisingly to me) paying attention to the election this time around.

Aux armes, citoyens!

Brad_In_MA emails to point out that Thursday is the anniversary of the epic screwing of TJIC by the People's Soviet of Massachusetts.  He has a call to action that is filled with win:

I propose a Jan 19 BUYcott of anything 2a related, in support of JTIC.  Mind putting up such a post?  I plan on getting a few targets and a brick of some .22lr range ammo for my ruger 22/45, aka Miss Cherry.  The idea is to BUY something.  Anything.  Price does not matter.  Quantity does not matter.  In short, a simple request for a simple action to support a Brother in Need.

I would go one step further, and suggest a buycott (the opposite of a boycott, 'natch, where you purposely buy from someone as opposed to refusing to buy from them).  As it turns out, TJIC is an entrepreneur, and has a company that makes this easy for everyone:  Smartflix.

Think Netflix, only for learning DVDs.  Want to learn CNC milling?  Introduction to gunsmithing?  Combat Pistol University?  M1 Garand Armorer course?

This is an opportunity for everyone to learn some skills that will likely appall the Usual Suspects™ in Massachusetts while helping to offset TJIC's legal costs (which will also appall the Usual Suspects™ in Massachusetts).

And so the call goes out.  Pass it on.  And look at SmartFlix, and point it out to your friends.  There's good stuff there.  Let's all stress his servers on January 19.  Aux armes, citoyens!

Fourth down and short

Quite some time ago, the TV here at FOB died the death.  That was annoying, because it was only 11 or 12 years old.  Now I don't watch much TV anyway, so the problem wasn't there.  Rather, it was losing the Netflix-over-Internet and ability to watch DVDs.

Yeah, I could watch the DVDs on the laptop, but even with the 17" laptop screen it just never was worth the bother.

And then today, I had this thought: what if you plug the laptop into the videoconferencing system I have here?  Turns out it works great.  So self, I said to myself.  What if you could plug the DVD player directly into the videoconferencing unit?

Well, the video unit is DVI, and the DVD player is HDMI.  No problem - Frye's Electronics had just the thing.  And so everything actually connects, I just don't get signal.  Phooey.

My plan is to call a timeout and bring in the special team (ask the engineers at work tomorrow).  I must say, it'd be nice to have Netflix and DVDs back, and instead of buying a $400 TV, I only paid $16 for the DVI-HDMI adapter.  We shall see.

Oh well - scored a John Lee Hooker CD at Half Priced Books.  $5.  Wh00t!

Harry Potter and the Ring Of Power

This Trailer has been rated PG for violence.  Viewer discretion is recommended.

Opus 5000

This is my 5,000th post.  As you well know, it's hard to get me to shut up.

For a while, I was tracking things like how many words I wrote a month.  The average was about 25,000, in around 120 posts each month.  If that still holds (and it sort of feels like it's in the ballpark), then I've probably written a little over a million words here.

Well, it seemed like a cunning plan at the time.

Paul Dukas - The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Go on your way,
do not tarry,
water carry,
let it flow abundantly,
and prepare a bath for me!

- Goethe, The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Fame can be annoying.  Paul Dukas was a late 19th/early 20th Century French composer, life long friend with Claude Debussy, and a complete perfectionist.  Rarely satisfied with his compositions, he destroyed many - perhaps the majority - and hid others.  One of his compositions was only found in recent years; its first performance was in 1995.

And so imagine the horror he felt at the fame that this piece rapidly achieved.  Inspired by Goethe's 1797 poem, it became a Parisian favorite.  And this was years before Disney's Fantasia made it even more popular.  It made Dukas somewhat cross, actually.

He was really no more than a journeyman composer and teacher, famous enough that he was buried in Paris' Père Lachaise cemetery with all the other artistic movers and shakers.  But not more famous than that.  Today, he's all but forgotten except for this song.

You can't always do what you want

Even when you really want to.

Dial 911 and die

I'm currently at FOB Borepatch in Austin, Texas.  Local law and tradition is that is some jerk assaults the perimeter here, and actually breaks in, inside the wire, I can shoot him graveyard dead.  I don't have to wonder, or ask myself if he's suffering from a life of deprivation - depraved because he's deprived.  The Castle Doctrine - recognizing that my home is my castle as recognized by ancient Common Law - allows me to assume that a housebreaker is up to no good and very likely has murderous intent.

Maybe they can get the drop on me, or my family.  But if they don't, we'll try our best to make sure that they don't go home that night fully staffed.  Of course, all Right Thinking People™ are appalled by this.  "We don't recommend self-help" says Massachusetts' dumb as a rock Attorney General Martha Coakley.  Call 911.  Lie back and think of (New) England.

Well, here in the free part of the United States of America, nobody believes that.  But even in Canada, the population is straying from Approved Opinions™:



That's not Texas.  That's Canada.

The Gun Control crowd is in a deep pit of fail.  The government is incompetent, courts repeatedly say that the government has no need to protect the likes of you, the gun control laws (surprise!) don't prevent prohibited persons like felons from getting guns.

And still they keep bleating for more gun control.  Not effective gun control.  Not making existing laws actually do what we were told they would.  Not requiring the Police to actually protect us within a certain time frame.

No, no, no.  They wake up in  the morning knowing the answer - more gun control.  They just don't know which question they'll be asked that day.

But even in Canada that message doesn't fly.  What an oddly incompetent group - Baldr Odinson, Joan Peterson, and the rest - that keep playing a broken musical instrument, thinking it sounds beautiful.  Even the Canadians don't listen any more.

Let's all call her Ma'am

Even if we have to work really hard to call her ma'am.



Via Theo.

This is so awesome that it draws blood

I think that this must be the "Tea Partiers are Terrorists" President of the Civility Project trying to make amends.  It's very, very well done and if I'm right, very gracious by Ms. Harrop.

Popehat to Advice Goddess to me to you.  Nuthin' nut 'Net.

UPDATE 14 January 2011 11:57: Bah, embed FAIL. You'll have to click through to Advice Goddess to watch.  Helpful Ptotip to the idiots doing the Daily Show's web marketing: if you want to allow people to embed this - you know, to get web presence - then it helps to give people embed code that actually, you know, works.  Love, Borepatch.

Vernon Dalhart - The Wreck of the Old 97

(Image source)

What does a New York City opera singer have to do with country music?  Don't judge a book by its cover.

You see, Vernon Dalhart was originally from Texas.  That wasn't even his real name - when he first performed in a production of Puccini, he made up a pseudonym to be listed in the program.  Vernon and Dalhart were the Texas towns where he rode on cattle drives in the 1890s.  He may have been singing in H.M.S. Pinafore, but he came by his cowboy chops honestly.

By the nineteen teens, phonographs were beginning to take off, and he auditioned in front of no less a figure as Thomas Edison.  By 1920, he was recording records - 12 inch 78-rpm disks with a single song on each side).  He recorded everything, from opera to Irish songs to Negro spirituals.  But everything changed in 1924.

The wreck of the Old 97 was a popular song about the 1903 wreck of a fast mail train.  It was country, not the other styles he sang, but since Dalhart recorded everything, he did this one too. 

This record sold seven million copies.  It was the best selling record until the 1950s, other than Christmas songs. 

But the music business was a tough one even then, and Dalhart's singing career was over by 1940.  He worked odd jobs including security guard during the War, dieing of a heart attack in 1948. 



The Wreck of The Old 97 (songwriters: G.B. Grayson, Henry Whitter)

Well they gave him his orders at Monroe Virginia

sayin' Steve you're way behind time
This is not 38 this is old 97
you must put her into Spencer on time

Then he turned around and said to his black greasy fireman
shovel on a little more coal
And when we cross that White Oak Mountain
watch old 97 roll

But it's a mighty rough road from Lynchburg to Danville
With a line on a three mile grade
It was on that grade that he lost his air brakes
see what a jump he made

He was goin' down the grade makin' 90 miles an hour
his whistle broke into a scream
He was found in the wreck with his hand on the throttle
A scalded to death by the steam

Then the telegram come to Washington station
and this is how it read
Oh that brave engineer that run old 97
he's a layin' in old Danville dead

So now all you ladies you better take a warnin'
from this time on and learn
Never speak harsh words to your true lovin' husband
He may leave you and never return

Vernon Dalhart was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1981.